A story in Tuesday's Business section incorrectly identified captive insurance pioneer Fred Reiss as Fred Rice.

Brian Hall has been enormously successful in what he has achieved for companies he has been associated with, Bermuda's insurance industry and the Island as a whole. And yet he remains a modest and affable man totally lacking in arrogance and very self effacing in his attitude.

"I've always been very much a team builder. One cannot be a leader if one is unwilling to be led. Leaders are only as good as the team around them,'' are some of Mr. Hall's words which amply describe his attitude.

Mr. Hall is president and founder of Inter-Ocean Management and a retired director and chairman of Johnson & Higgins. He is a long time member of the Insurance Advisory Committee, of which he also served as chairman from 1985 to 1998, and served as the founding president of the Bermuda Insurance Managers Association.

He was instrumental in starting the Bermuda Foundation for Insurance Studies, was appointed to the board of governors of the Bermuda College and is a trustee of the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute. In 1999 he was appointed a director of RenaissanceRe Holdings.

He is also a fellow of the British Institute of Management and a graduate of the Harvard Business School International Senior Managers' programme. He was awarded an OBE in the Queen's New Year's honours list in 1998.

Last month the Island's insurance industry honoured his diligence and success by awarding him the Bermuda Insurance Institute's Life Time Achievement Award.

This annual award is given to someone who has distinguished themselves over the course of their career in the Island's insurance industry, and selection of the recipient is by a broad based panel from within the industry.

In his introduction to the award Roger Gillett of ACE said of Mr. Hall: "The difference in my mind between a visionary and a dreamer is that the visionary converts his dreams into reality through actions. Brian is a man of action.

"I was involved in many projects with Brian which often resulted in me putting into words what we had discussed. When Brian edited my work he would always remove qualifications on actions we would take. Things like `we will endeavour' `we will try' `we expect' were always eliminated and replaced with `we will'. That was to me a clear demonstration of Brian's positive attitude.'' Mr. Hall was born in the UK and came to Bermuda when he was 11.

"I grew up here. I didn't have the opportunity to go to college so when I graduated from Saltus Grammar School I joined American International in their accounts department and over time became a senior manager in that department,'' he said.

Having worked his way through the insurance industry he is a fervent advocate of gaining experience on the shop floor.

His life really took a major turn in 1963 when Fred Rice came to Bermuda and set up a captive management operation. "Captives was a brand new concept and I was asked if I wanted to join them,'' Mr. Hall said.

"There were only four or five employees in the beginning. Although I was already in a steady job I viewed this as a challenge and joined them.'' After six years he felt bold enough to set up his own management company, Inter-Ocean Management, to do some of the things in this field that Mr. Rice was not doing. "I didn't know initially if I was self employed or unemployed.

I was doing everything myself,'' he said.